Raymond Wright – Many As One – Pow Pow Productions 2010

Biography:

Born in St. Catherine, Jamaica on November 11, 1971, Raymond started his career by playing a variety of musical instruments and singing in his local church in Jamaica. He also conducted singing lessons to the local church choir. His Spiritual devotion and love for the Church, led him to study Theology, which he successfully obtained a Theological Degree!

Raymond had another passion, Music and Singing. He decides to follow his heart to pursuit a career with in the Music Industry.

Raymond Wright started working with “Shocking Vibes Crew”, in 1998-2001 Under the management of Patrick Roberts, who also handled the careers of Beenie Man, Bling Dog, Tanto Metro and Devonte.

During the three years that Raymond worked under the Management of “Shocking Vibes Crew”, he appeared at various local gigs and major concerts in Jamaica and throughout Europe, as well released a number of singles on the local Independent market in Jamaica, song titles, “To H.I.M.”, “When you call on me”, “Just for Love” and “Always”. Other Single Tracks include “Always,” “Critic Highway” and “Honey” feat. “Twiggy.” Music Producer collaborations were, “Sly Dunbar,” “Jack Radics”, “Fitzroy McKenzy”, “Pirana” and “Barry O’Hare”

Many As One

This album has been on my desk for a few months now but I have only just got around to getting a review together although I have been spinning it from time to time during this time. It is a large album with 18 tracks on and all are very professionally produced with a high quality studio sound. Once you start to listen to the album you can understand straight way that Raymond is a serious quality vocal soul singer and very talented. His voice is rich with a beautiful tone and a pleasure to listen too.

As with any album, the opening track is so important as it sets the mode for the rest of the album and this album has a top quality opening track called “Better Place” which like all the tracks on the album is a rich roots led track with wonderful melodies. In fact the first 3 tracks all follow this type of quality roots track and by track 4 you are nicely chilled and enjoying the album.

Now then track 4 “Hand That Feed You” is a loose dancehall flavour with guest MC and is a wicked track. After this slight discursion in genre we are back into roots based music with yet more total quality vocals and melodic tracks all leading through to the title track “Many As One” which is the strongest track on a strong album.

Roach features on “First Choice” which has a slight lovers rock feeling but isn’t too soppy with a very strong chorus and would make a great single. There is another slow tempo track on the album called “Hey There Lady” but apart from these the album is of a true roots tempo all the way through. In fact the only real complaint I have about the album is that it has too many tracks on it and sometimes each track sounds very similar to others. I personally would of preferred less tracks with the tracks being more extended so that we could hear more of the quality musicians used on the album as most of the time you don’t notice them due to the pure quality of Raymond’s vocals. There are 3 or 4 tracks towards the end of the album that feel like ‘fillers’ and maybe should have been dropped in favour of extended versions of the better tracks.

With that said, this is a quality album with some very strong tracks on it that show off the quality of the vocals and lyrics, most certainly worth a few bucks from your pocket.

Reviewed by: Dean Marcel

1. Better Place

2. Anyway

3. Lover Divine

4. Hand That Feet You

5. They Don't Know

6. Gideon

7. King James

8. Sufferer

9. Many As One

10. First Choice Feat. Roach

11. Rasta

12. Wifey

13. Hey There Lady

14. Things

15. Carry On

16. Natty

17. Dreams Come True

18. Pay The Price Feat. Fitta Warrio

UKRG Interview with Raymond Wright - www.ukreggaeguide.co.uk/index.php

Vision Management - www.visionsartistmanagement.net/Raymond_Wright.html

Facebook - www.facebook.com/Raymond.Wright.jam

Homepage - site.raymondwrightjam.net